Income and Wealth
Main articles: Income in the United States and Wealth in the United States See also: Personal income in the United States, Household income in the United States, Income inequality in the United States, Poverty in the United States, Affluence in the United States, and Homeownership in the United StatesAccording to the United States Census Bureau, the pretax median household income in 2007 was $50,233. The median ranged from $68,080 in Maryland to $36,338 in Mississippi.
In 2007, the median real annual household income rose 1.3% to $50,233, according to the Census Bureau. The real median earnings of men who worked full-time, year-round climbed between 2006 and 2007, from $43,460 to $45,113. For women, the corresponding increase was from $33,437 to $35,102. The median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14) was $26,036 in 2006. The average home in the United States has more than 700 square feet per person, which is 50%–100% more than the average in other high-income countries. Even in the lowest income percentiles people enjoy more space – average 400 square feet per person – than middle classes in Europe do. Likewise, ownership rates of gadgets and amenities are exceptionally high compared to other countries.
The recently released US Income Mobility Study showed economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. Income mobility of individuals was considerable in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2004 period with roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom quintile moving up to a higher income group within 10 years. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.
Between June 2007 and November 2008 the global recession led to falling asset prices around the world. Assets owned by Americans lost about a quarter of their value. Since peaking in the second quarter of 2007, household wealth is down $14 trillion. The Fed also said that at the end of 2008, the debt owed by nonfinancial sectors was $33.5 trillion, including household debt valued at $13.8 trillion. About 30% of the entire world's millionaire population resides in the United States (in 2009). The Economist Intelligence Unit estimated in 2008 that there were 16,600,000 millionaires in the U.S. Furthermore, 34% of the world's billionaires are American (in 2011).
Read more about this topic: Economy Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the words income and, income and/or wealth:
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;—and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“When I did first impart my love to you,
I freely told you all the wealth I had
Ran in my veins: I was a gentleman;
And then I told you true.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)